I have used remote access to do work from home before. Usually for no more than than three hours. I generally have found the process cumbersome and prone to crashing on me so often that I would rather take the hour-plus train ride to my office to wore more efficiently, than do it from home. It has been close to a year since I last attempted such. That’s how much I dislike it that option.

COVID-19 has taken that option from me.

I was ordered to stay home and I actually listened. I know my boss was surprised, more likely shocked, by it this morning. Thus today was the first time I attempted a full workday solely by remote access.

On one side, getting an extra two hours of sleep when it’s not the weekend or vacation was oddly disconcerting, on the other side it was wonderful. Still, I got up, showered and made my bed, because I’m OCD like that, before I fired up the PC and jumped in.

The system has improved vastly since I last used it. After I installed the new app and all its 5.5 googol updates (a googol is an actual number – look it up), I was good to go. There was a half-hour where the connection dropped repeatedly, but then mysteriously stopped as it mysteriously started. I have to admit, I was impressed. I made a few calls, emailed more and finally put a dent in a new training manual I am authoring. It was me, iTunes and multi-page documentation. That was the good news.

Unfortunately, the bad news is all the bad habits my work wife is trying to break me out, now that we sit near each other, came back with a vengeance. All her gentle, and sometimes blatant, reminders were not there to break up the tunnel vision I get when working – especially on documentation.

“Do you want to get some coffee?” “Have you moved since you came in?” “I’m starving – what’s for lunch?”

My in a few minutes quickly coalesced into a few hours later. I mean, I’m home, in my own house – the kitchen is literally on the other side of the wall – how did I not take lunch today? And only my eyes crossing, forcing me to step away for longer than a bathroom break stopped me. Sorry, wifey.

At least now I know that remote access won’t be quite the production draining burden I feared in terms of loss of work. But I still dislike it. I have to work out getting my slices done before I start focusing. I can see now, without a serious distraction, I’m going to be posting late a lot for the rest of this challenge. I definitely dislike that.